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While there has been a lot of focus on digital advertising lately, sometimes you just can’t beat the traditional. But instead of the classic billboard, Denver Water is going the extra mile, drawing inspiration from the craft world for these exquisite handmade ads, which look like they belong in a gallery.

Denver Water created these crafty ads through Sukle Advertising for its long-running campaign “Use Only What You Need” about conserving water.

The agency used a bunch of materials, creating a cloud out of Lego pieces, waves out of pencils, a water drop out of crocheted string and a Fawcett with blue clay spurting out of it, all depicting water in some way, shape or form, with the tagline “You can’t make this stuff” – too true.

"Consumers often see conservation as a sacrifice, something they have to give up, which they often aren't willing to do," says agency founder and creative director Mike Sukle. "We have, instead, used the approach of 'not wasting.' Consumers see waste differently than conservation, so the messaging of 'Use Only What You Need' follows the mind of the consumer that wasting is wrong."

According to Adweek water use in Denver recently hit a record low, so it appears the campaign, now in its ninth year, is having an impact.

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Delving into it a bit more, you say that lots of people have drawn things using gps. That would be ok if you leapt from miscellaneous drawings to the idea of drawing dicks. But this didn’t. This went from drawing ...

I'm afraid it kind of is man. The drawing of dicks using the maps was someone else's idea. It was then repurposed for a advertising purpose. And let's not pretend that the creatives who 'repurposed' it didn't see the original ...

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